CES 2012: The Hottest Smartphones

Most of the hottest phones at CES 2012 have one thing in common: They run on Google Android–with a couple of Windows Phone 7 exceptions.

Motorola, Samsung, Sony, LG, and many others are clamoring to showcase their smartphone offerings for 2012. Here are the phones that caught our eye on the show floor this week.

Huawei claims the “world’s slimmest smartphone” title with the Ascend P1 S, featuring a 4.3-inch display with 960-by-540-pixel resolution, a dual-core 1.5 GHz processor, and an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera with 1080p video capture. It runs on Android 4.0.

Huawei did not announce pricing or U.S. carrier availability.

Nokia refined the Lumia 800, already out in Europe, so it could be competitive in the United States. The Nokia Lumia 900‘s display got bumped up to 4.30 inches (from 3.7 inches), the company also added a front-facing camera and support for AT&T’s growing LTE network. Pricing has not been announced.

The Lenovo S2 has a dual-core 1.4GHz processor, an 8-megapixel camera, a 3.8-inch display with 800-by-480-pixel resolution and a unique kernel-level security system that protects your data, prevents phishing, and traffics SMS messages.

Lenovo has not made any formal announcements on pricing and availability of the Android Gingerbread phone.

The LG Spectrum will be available exclusively on Verizon from January 19 for $200 with a two-year contract. The phone has a 4.5-inch high-resolution display (1280 by 720 pixels–329 pixels per inch), and runs on a 1.5GHz dual-core processor with 4G LTE connectivity.

The Spectrum runs on Android 2.3 (4.0 upgrade promised in second half of 2012) and will have support for the Netflix Android app. There’s an 8-megapixel camera on the back too.

The budget 4G LTE-capable Pantech Burst will cost $49 with a two-year contract, or free when bundled with the Pantech Element Honeycomb tablet. It will debut January 22 with AT&T.

The Burst has a 4-inch display, 16GB of on-board memory, a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, and its 5-megapixel camera can capture video in up to 720p HD resolution.

The Sony Xperia Ion hooks into AT&T’s LTE 4G network, has a 4.6-inch 1280-by-720-pixel resolution display, a super thin design, and a 12-megapixel camera.

The Xperia has a near-field-communication chip built in and will be able to read content stored in NFC chips. What’s missing? A price tag and a release date.

The Samsung Galaxy Note is headed to U.S. shores, exclusive to AT&T’s 4G LTE network. The 5.3-inch 1280-by-800 resolution display puts the Note in an interesting place between a phone and a tablet.

It’s powered by a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and contains an 8-megapixel camera on the back. Samsung has yet to announce pricing and availability for the Galaxy Note.

The Droid Razr Maxx has the same features as the original Droid Razr, but has a higher capacity battery (3300mAh from 1700mAh).

Verizon claims that the Droid Razr Maxx will offer a rather impressive 21 hours of continuous talk time–that’s yet to be tested. No official launch date or pricing available yet.

The Motorola Droid 4 is the follow-up to the Droid 3. It runs Android 2.3 and should get an upgrade to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) in the first half of 2012.

Inside the Droid 4 are a dual-core 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM, along with an 8-megapixel camera on the back. It’s not as thin as the Droid Razr and, just like its sibling, it has no launch date or price with Verizon.

The HTC Titan II‘s 4.7-inch super LCD screen is the largest display yet on a Windows Phone 7 device. It’s powered by a 1.5 GHz processor and sports a jaw-dropping 16-megapixel camera with an f/2.6 wide-angle lens and autofocus.

AT&T will carry the Titan II, but no word when or for how much.

The LG Viper is Sprint’s 4G LTE eco-friendly phone running Android 2.3. It’s powered by a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor and features a 4-inch display, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, as well as a front-facing VGA camera for video chat.

Sprint did not release pricing or availability information for the LG Viper.